The term “provisioning” is commonly used in the field of telecommunications to refer to the processes by which telecommunication services are managed (e.g. created, subscribed, modified, deleted, etc), which implies to “provide” the necessary data in the appropriate entities (e.g. application servers, telecommunication nodes, user terminals, etc) that are involved in the delivery or in the consumption of said services. Across the present application, the term “telecommunications service” (or its truncated well-known form “service”) is used to refer to the services that can be provided by a telecommunications system, which can comprise: basic communication services (such as voice, data or multimedia calls), enhanced services (such as intelligent treatment of calls), messaging services (such as short messages SMS, or multi-media messages MMS), information services (such as location-based weather information), etc, or combinations thereof.
Provisioning a telecommunication service involves a “provisioning process”, which can be described as the set of actions required to manage the necessary data to allow said service to be created, modified, subscribed, etc. For example, provisioning processes may take place for the subscription of a user to a given service provided by a telecommunications system, for the withdrawal or modification of said subscription, or for the creation of a new service supplied from said system. A provisioning process may also take place for the creation of a new subscription for a new user in a telecommunications system, as it usually implies the subscription of the user to, at least, a set of basic services.
A provisioning process involves a provisioning entity issuing the appropriate provisioning orders to a number of provisioned entities. Traditional provisioning entities are management or administration servers assigned to service setting or service configuration tasks, such as Customer Administration Systems (CAS); while the kind of provisioned entities may range from serving entities in telecommunications systems (e.g. a telecommunications node such as a home location register HLR, an application server such as a messaging service centre SMSC MMC, a presence server, etc), to user terminals adapted to access to a telecommunications system (e.g. mobile phones, personal computers, etc).
Known provisioning techniques regards various forms by which, in a provisioning process, a provisioning entity can communicate with one or more provisioned entities so as to manage the corresponding data. For example, the provision of a given service may involve setting, modifying or erasing data in more than one provisioned entities, which can involve the use of a plurality of communication interfaces as well as the use of various communication protocols, so as to properly convey the appropriate provisioning orders. Thus, a first problem dealing with provisioning was to control and simplify the provisioning process taking into account the particularities of the different kind of provisioned entities.
This problem is addressed by patent application WO 00/38437, which discloses a “handler interface” (ref. 22 on its FIG. 2) arranged to: (i) receive a provisioning order issued from a provisioning entity (a Customer Administration System CAS), (ii) identify provisioned entity/ies (“network elements”) affected by said order, (iii) determine whether the received provisioning order is “incoherent” (not understandable, not applicable or conflicting), and (iv) send one or more specific provisioning orders derived from the received order to the affected provisioned entity/ies; wherein a sent specific provisioning order is adapted by the “handler interface” to be understandable for a target provisioned entity. To accomplish with these tasks, the “handler interface” of WO 00/38437 comprises a database (ref.32 on its FIG. 2) that stores (“network over-view knowledge”) the relation between subscribers, their subscribed services and the network nodes which supply said services. Accordingly, said patent application provides a solution to control a provisioning process, by which, a centralized provisioning entity does not need to know about details concerning the corresponding provisioned entity(ies) (such as their identities or the suitable communication protocols), and wherein “incoherent” provisioning orders are automatically detected and rejected.
In the provisioning scenario addressed by WO 00/38437, a network operator makes service provisioning from a centralized CAS to some of the telecommunication nodes of its network domain. However, the evolution and complexity of the services offered by modern telecommunications systems (some of them involving the intervention of various network and/or service operators), as well as the evolution of the user terminals, may give rise to new provisioning scenarios that, eventually, could go beyond the simplified (centralized) scenario addressed by WO 00/38437. In particular, new kind of actors, beyond the network operator's management or administrative systems, might advantageously be involved as provisioning entities in provisioning; which, in turn, might add complexity to the provisioning processes in said—let's say—distributed provisioning scenarios.
For example, a user terminal may be involved as a provisioned entity in a provisioning process that, e.g., affects some of its configuration data. Advantageously, a user terminal (e.g. via a self-provisioning application) could be also involved as a provisioning entity in a provisioning process that, e.g., affects the subscription data of its user. Furthermore, a company can hold a “master” subscription (e.g. a corporate subscription) in a given network operator (such as a mobile network operator) for some of its employees, wherein they are provided with individual subscriptions belonging to the “mater” subscription with said operator. In this situation, it should also be desirable that said company might also be involved in provisioning and, e.g., might issue provisioning orders for subscribe, withdraw or modify some service(s) for some of its employees; thus, avoiding to send (e.g. by mail) administrative petitions to the network operator and the subsequent administrative processing, and thus avoiding delays until the corresponding provisioning order(s) are finally entered in the network operator's CAS system. Also, a network operator may sign service agreements with some service providers (e.g. content providers, added-value service providers, etc) that can provide services from their own application servers through the premises of the telecommunications system of the operator. In this latest case, it might be desirable that configuration or administrative systems belonging to a service provider might also issue provisioning orders affecting entities under the domain of the network operator (such as telecommunications nodes, servers, etc, of the network operator, as well as to user terminals subscribed to said network operator), so as configure or adapt them for a given service. Similarly, it might be also desirable that a management or administrative system belonging to the network operator issues provisioning orders affecting servers belonging to a service provider. Furthermore, in some cases, it may be desirable to use various management systems to manage the same network element, user terminal, server, etc, (e.g. each specialized in providing different portions of service configuration data).
A prior-art solution as described in the aforementioned patent application WO 00/38437 helps to insolate a provisioning entity about details concerning the provisioned entities, as well as to prevent incoherent provisioning orders to progress. However, it addresses a centralized provisioning scenario with a single entity issuing all the provisioning orders concerning the provision of a service and, therefore, it is assumed said single provisioning entity provides all the data needed to execute a provisioning process for a given service (i.e. all the provisioning data for a service to be properly created, modified, subscribed, etc). For distributed provisioning scenarios as cited above, a solution to control a provisioning process as described therein would provide the aforementioned advantages of insolating a provisioning entity about details concerning a provisioned entity, as well as detecting and rejecting incoherent provisioning orders. However, it would also compel any eventual provisioning entity to know all the necessary data related to the provision of a given service; given that, otherwise, an incomplete provisioning order issued would be considered “incoherent”, and thus rejected, since it would be inapplicable as such.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an alternative solution to control a provisioning process in a distributed provisioning scenario.